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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22513201">Loveless</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430'>kitkatt0430</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>AroWriMo - 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Original Work</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Amatanormativity, Aromantic, Aromantic Character, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gaslighting, Gen, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Unnamed characters - Freeform, choosing not to date, learning to love one's self, leaving an unhappy relationship, realizing for some people being single is where they're happiest</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-02-01</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-18 08:42:35</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>753</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22513201</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitkatt0430/pseuds/kitkatt0430</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>She's never been in love.  It's an odd realization to have as she's packing her things and he's given up on asking her to stay. Now he just obstructs her on occasion, arguing that things which are hers are really his.</p><p>Some things are worth the effort to fight for. Others are not.</p><p>He is not.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series:</b></td><td>AroWriMo - 2020 [1]</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Series URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/series/1619809</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>12</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>22</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>AroWriMo 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>Loveless</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>For the AroWriMo Week One prompt - Acceptance</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>He was funny. Well...</p><p>He was funny sometimes. But since he was only funny when he was making fun of her, he made her cry more often than laugh.</p><p>"You're too sensitive," he tells her. Like its a mantra that, if repeated often enough, might toughen her up.</p><p>She isn't sure why she stays with him on the nights when he's gone to bed drunk and she's in the living room, curled up on the couch crying to herself. She doesn't love him and he doesn't love her. She's miserable.</p><p>But she tells herself that being alone must be worse. It has to be. No one wants to be alone, after all.</p><p>In the back of her mind she fears it's all her fault. That she really is too sensitive, too broken, too loveless and joyless to find the humor in his teasing and the happiness in his smiles.</p>
<hr/><p>"I love you," he says, like it'll make the way he's been belittling her interests and profession all night alright. He uses the words like a weapon. As if to say, I couldn't actually be doing anything harmful because I love you.</p><p>She hates those words these days. Hates herself for smiling automatically in response. A brittle, plastic smile, like a broken Barbie doll.</p><p>She doesn't say the words back, though. For the first time in a long time, she keeps silent rather than lie.</p><p>And that small act of defiance feels amazing. Like the first stone in a rockslide.</p><p>When he goes to bed that night, she looks at apartment listings and considers what her budget might look like</p>
<hr/><p>The empty room is a relief. Balm to her soul for all that she can't imagine her things in the space.</p><p>She can't imagine him in this space either.</p><p>She doesn't know who she'll be if she moves here, with the view of the creek and the apartment building on the other side of the tiny bridge, but...</p><p>She'd be alone and it terrifies her. She hasn't been alone in so long and the change is frightening.</p><p>Yet... she craves it. She needs to know.</p><p>Breathes in. Breathes out. Decision made, she feels lighter than she has in years.</p><p>"I'll take it."</p>
<hr/><p>She's never been in love.</p><p>It's an odd realization to have as she's packing her things and he's given up on asking her to stay. Now he just obstructs her on occasion, arguing that things which are hers are really his.</p><p>Some things are worth the effort to fight for. Others are not. He is not.</p><p>She's said the words 'I love you' before. Said them to him, even. But they never felt right, never flowed from her tongue with effortless grace.</p><p>She's dated, before him. Said the words before him. Never meant it, though she'd wanted, desperately, to mean them every time.</p><p>Perhaps she'd been in love with the idea of love. The neatly prepackaged promise of happiness through togetherness and romance that she'd been spoon fed since childhood. The constant insinuations that no one could be happy being single. Drowning in the message until she rejected her own wants and desires as being wrong and couldn't even recognize what they were anyway.</p><p>But those moments between relationships were the happiest in her life. And as the last box is packed away to be driven across town to her new home, there's a satisfaction buzzing in her chest she barely recognizes. It's been so long since she's felt this way. Free.</p>
<hr/><p>"You need to get back in the game," her friends advise her. Dating, of course.</p><p>But dating has only ever made her miserable. Romance only ever made her hate herself. And, eventually, hate her partners too.</p><p>She gets to know herself instead. Tries new hobbies. Exercises more. Takes a dance class on the weekends. Wears clothing that makes her happy. She gets to know the woman in the mirror and slowly starts to realize that she's wonderful and strong.</p><p>How could she ever give this up? How could anyone think this was lesser?</p>
<hr/><p>The flag comes in the mail and she carefully irons out the wrinkles before tacking it up on the wall over her couch. It was an impulse buy, but the sight of it pinned up causes satisfaction to bloom in her chest. The green, white, gray, and black stripes matched well with the color scheme of her apartment.</p><p>Maybe it was fate.</p><p>She wasn't loveless as once she'd feared. She simply needed to learn to love herself.</p>
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